Investiture
by xv323
Summary: One would expect a dragon as powerful as a Night Fury to be noble and upstanding in his behaviour and demeanour, but then again, they do grow hungry very quickly... Oneshot, intended to be funny, I hope it is...


**So the tone of Hero of the Day has been getting a bit darker of late (did you notice? XD) and I thought I needed to write something lighthearted.**

**This doesn't really fit the canon of Hero of the Day - Stoick's not dead, Hiccup's not a broken individual and never has been - in many ways it's more suited to the original movie's ending.**

**I am going to update Hero of the Day soon, incidentally, and apologies for being so effing lazy all the time. Hopefully this can appease a little of that.**

**Enjoy, and please review when you're done!**

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><p><strong>Investiture<strong>

Hiccup wasn't sure he could be more uncomfortable if he tried.

Heavy, thickset, ceremonial robes worn on one of Berk's rare warm days did not make for easy going, but notionally at least, it was important.

Though Hiccup had had quite enough of being somehow important, one way or the other.

Traditionally in Berk, the heir apparent to the chieftainship was first presented to the assembled village on his eighteenth birthday, bedecked in all sorts of finery and hence subjected to a multitude of bewildering and bizarre rites and rituals - rituals steeped in the annals of history, and, as far as Hiccup was concerned, covered in a good number of proverbial cobwebs. He _hated_ standing on ceremony.

It had been with a sigh and muted, dragging, reluctant steps that he'd made his way to the Mead Hall early that same morning to be practically assaulted by a special detachment of senior women of the tribe. And now he looked like this.

Stoick had over the years made little secret of the fact that he'd been dreading the coming of this day for the first sixteen of his son's eighteen years, but for the last two, he'd been every part the proud father - and today was the day, Hiccup knew, that the saccharine, excruciatingly embarrassing praise and barely-held-back tears of overwrought, melodramatic pride were to burst forth from his father.

He honestly wondered how he was going to keep from rolling his eyes and muttering sarcastic comments under his breath whilst the elder was supposed to be committing his soul to the service of the gods, or whatever vaguely scary-sounding thing she was planning on doing this time.

He knew he had to bite his tongue, because this was to be a _solemn_ occasion, and from the number of times Hiccup had had this spelled out to him in no uncertain terms, he felt he'd need to be some sort of cretin not to have gotten the message. Basically, he could not screw this up.

His reputation, even despite two years of respect and admiration from the village, had still preceeded him. Nobody was very confident.

So it was, though, that he found himself standing on a raised wooden platform in the centre of the village, staring out at a sea of faces - actually no, in reality it seemed more like a sea of beards of various astonishing lengths and colours - and pretending to be listening intently.

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><p><em>Solemn. Studious. Serene. Calm<em>

Toothless knew the meaning of precisely none of these words, and he didn't much care.

He was _hungry._

Of course, this happened a lot, and he'd learnt pretty quickly that the way to get food was not so much to pester Hiccup, who knew him far too well, but rather to go and find Astrid, who, for someone who'd spent most of her formative years learning how to kill dragons, seemed _remarkably _susceptible to big round eyes, big round pupils, and purring. Lots of purring.

Toothless was not often hungry for any great deal of time.

Now, though, he couldn't find her. She wasn't in the big, odd, wooden, covering _thing _he'd heard called a _house, _she wasn't in the bigger, recently-built wooden _thing_ that the humans called a _stable_, and she wasn't, as far as he could tell, in amongst the still-living wood in the forest, doing her best to kill it herself by hurling axes at trees, as she was normally wont to do on a regular basis.

Toothless whined to himself. He was _hungry._

He glanced around again, seeing if he could see anyone at all whom he could try to accost, before his ears pricked up at the barely-discernible sound of cheering wafting over the rooftops from the centre of the village.

It didn't take Toothless much time to decide that that was his best bet for a haddock of the sort that was good to eat, rather than the sort that made him new tailfins and told him off when he broke things, and with that, off he trotted.

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><p>"Do you solemnly swear to protect the village and island of Berk from whatever harm may threaten to befall it, even at the cost of all you hold dear?"<p>

"I do".

"Do you solemnly swear never to shrink from and never to show mercy in the vanquishing of your foes and those of the village?"

"I...do?"

"Do you solemnly swear to cut off the head of every dragon that crosses your path and present it to the assembled council as proof of your valour?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Err, Greta, I think we can leave that one out..." Stoick's voice said from behind him, and Hiccup watched the slightly-scary, slightly-maniacal grin that had been slowly growing on the elder's face slip slightly - but only slightly.

"Alright, onwards...do you solemnly swear to disembowel -"

"That one can go as well, Greta."

Sighing and muttering under her breath, the elder inhaled again.

"Do you solemnly swear to -"

Without warning, she suddenly fell silent. Hiccup looked up, confused, and only caught for a second the priceless look of surprise plastered on Greta's face, before the platform he was standing on shook violently as something heavy and powerful and _very _enthusiastic landed on it.

Barely keeping his balance, Hiccup whirled round, to be faced with the sight of a toothlessly-grinning Toothless sitting on his haunches and looking expectantly back at him.

"_Toothless!" _Hiccup whispered furiously. "_What in Thor's name are you -"_

Toothless didn't wait for his rider to finish his sentence, instead choosing to thump his not-insubstantial tail on the decking several times in quick succession, all the time steadfastly maintaining his infuriatingly innocent, hopeful expression.

Hiccup heard a cry of surprise from behind him, followed by a muffled thump, and then several loud and sincere curses not at all befitting of a village elder, even one who has just been indirectly poleaxed by an overexuberant Night Fury.

In short, Greta had been knocked clean over, and was, judging by the colour of her language, none too pleased about it.

"_TOOTHLESS!"_

Hiccup was, to put it mildly, not much amused when Toothless chose to respond to this latest admonishment by lolling his tongue out of his mouth and cocking one of his ears.

"Toothless, this is supposed to be a formal occasion! Stop acting up like - AARGH!"

Hiccup would never to his dying day know how Toothless' train of thought had led him to decide that there were fish to be found underneath the platform. All he knew was, there was now a splintered hole in the wooden decking, where moments before there most decidedly hadn't been, and this hole had a madly-wagging Night Fury tail, with an accusatory red tailfin that seemed to say to Hiccup that this was all his fault, protruding out of it. The platform itself now felt as if it had been set afloat on a particularly rough swell, balancing as it was on the ridge of Toothless' back and his semi-extended wings.

This was a problem, and it became a more acute problem moments later, when Toothless decided there weren't any fish to be found there after all, and stood up with some considerable rapidity, ostensibly for a better look around and certainly seeming to forget what, and whom, was on his back.

And so it was that Hiccup found himself clinging to a chimneystack, with the entirety of the village falling about in hysterics below him and one dragon, who _certainly_ wasn't getting fed tonight, staring up at him, still grinning for all the world as if he'd done something to be proud of.

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><p><strong>Toothless always struck me as the sort that could get away with just about anything with that smile of his. Whaddaya think? ;P<strong>

**As I said at the top, please review, even if you thought it was the most unfunny thing you've ever read. I'd appreciate it if you weren't quite _that _blunt, but you get the idea...XD**


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